Chapter Text
September arrived in Evendale with a quiet hush, as if the valley itself were holding its breath between the fading warmth of summer and the crisp embrace of autumn. The mornings were laced with the first whispers of coolness, the kind that made Soobin pull his shawl tighter around his shoulders as he stepped onto the dewy grass. Mist clung to the hollows of the meadows, reluctant to rise even as the sun sent golden shafts of light through the thinning canopy of the birch trees.
The air still carried the scent of ripened apples, sweet and heady, drifting from the orchards along Maple Lane, where the first fruit of the season had begun to be plucked and stored in barrels for cider pressing. The bees hummed lazily over the last of the wildflowers, and the creek, running clear and lively from the late summer rains, murmured softly as though drowsy with the change of seasons.
Main Street stirred earlier these days, as farmers hurried to prepare for the coming frost. The smithy rang with the sound of hammer on iron, the baker’s shop smelled of fresh molasses bread, and the Carmody Inn bustled with the comings and goings of travelers who stopped to rest on their way to larger towns beyond the valley.
It was a time of in-betweens — summer’s laughter still echoing in the rustling cornfields, but autumn’s steady footsteps creeping ever closer. And in the quiet of the valley, where the hills rolled gently towards the horizon, change drifted in as softly as the wind through the birches, inevitable as the turning of the leaves.
The morning air held that tender sweetness peculiar to early September, when summer’s warmth lingers only as a fond afterthought. It was rich with the scent of damp earth, cool moss, and the faint perfume of wild asters nodding in the hedgerows. Beomgyu and Soobin walked side by side along the winding path to the schoolhouse, their books hugged close, the narrow track dappled with light that sifted through the green lace of the trees overhead. The branches arched above them in a cathedral of living emerald, and the leaves murmured softly to the breeze as if passing along secrets neither boy was meant to hear. Somewhere in the undergrowth, a rabbit darted away, its quick movement sending a shiver through the ferns.
“Miss Williams says she saw a ghost in the upper corridor,” Soobin declared at last, his voice solemn enough to suit the gravity of the subject, though the sparkle in his dark eyes betrayed his relish for the telling.
Beomgyu’s brows rose with mock alarm. “A ghost, you say?”
“Yes,” Soobin affirmed, clutching his books more tightly. “She said it was dressed all in a mourning suit, with a veil, weeping most terribly. She nearly fainted when she went for a drink of water in the night.”
Beomgyu pressed one hand to his heart as though struck by the tale. “How dreadful!” he exclaimed, though a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Though I daresay it was more likely a mischievous draft and a trick of moonlight than a spirit from the great beyond.”
“You don’t believe me!” Soobin accused, narrowing his eyes in mock offense.
Beomgyu’s laughter came light and bright, threading through the stillness like the chiming of a silver bell. “Nonsense, dearest — I believe you believe it!”
Soobin lunged for him then, a sudden burst of mischief, intent on tugging at the end of Beomgyu’s neat braid. But Beomgyu, nimble as a brook trout, leapt back with a shriek of mirth, lifting his skirts as he darted down the sun-dappled path, the ribbons of his hair streaming behind him like a pennant in the wind.
Not to be outdone, Soobin tucked his books securely beneath his arm and gave chase, his laughter spilling into the air to mingle with the rustle of leaves and the chatter of hidden birds. The two of them ran like boys in a storybook — one fleet and teasing as a woodland sprite, the other determined and grinning, both wrapped in the breathless delight of the moment.
By the time they crested the golden meadow and reached the schoolhouse hill, Soobin’s breath was coming fast, his cheeks flushed a warm, triumphant pink. Beomgyu stood ahead of him, laughter still tumbling from his lips — laughter so bright and unrestrained it seemed it might go rolling down into the valley below and set the whole place echoing with joy.
The schoolhouse was already alive when they stepped inside, the air buzzing with the scrape of benches across the scuffed pine floor and the overlapping chatter of voices trying to speak over one another. Chalk cracked faintly against the slate board at the front as Mr. Woods, sleeves rolled to the elbow, scrawled the day’s lessons in his careful, looping hand. The mingled scents of chalk dust, old wood, and damp wool coats gave the room that familiar, slightly musty warmth, softened by the faint crispness of autumn drifting through the tall, open windows.
Near the back, Taehyun and Kai sat in their usual places: Kai slumped over his desk like a half-folded map, eyes glazed with sleep, while Taehyun flicked wads of torn paper at him with the sharp precision of a boy who had practiced the angle many times before.
Soobin, having slid his lunch pail into the crowded entranceway closet beside Beomgyu’s, squared his shoulders and began his march down the aisle with the sheer, cold resolve of an omega who would rather expire than acknowledge an alpha’s existence. He passed Yeonjun’s desk without so much as the flicker of an eyelash. His chin was lifted in perfect, icy indifference, his step steady.
Yeonjun’s corner — the unofficial gathering place for the louder, rougher-voiced alphas — was a low hum of laughter and murmured jokes. Soobin did not slow, did not glance, did not let his gaze stray from the sunlit window waiting for him at the far end of the room. Already he was picturing himself there: chin propped in his hand, gaze sliding past the drifting golden leaves outside while only half-hearing the morning recitation of The Lord’s Prayer .
Beomgyu, naturally, claimed the aisle seat beside him, arranging himself with deliberate elegance so that one elbow could reach the row across to poke at Taehyun when necessary.
By midday, the omegas had retreated to their usual huddle in the schoolyard, lunch pails open and neatly wrapped sandwiches balanced on laps. The crisp air was full of the faint metallic tang of fallen leaves and the chatter of nearby sparrows. Rachel Clyde, curls bouncing with authority, cleared her throat as though about to deliver a speech from the pulpit.
“I’ve decided,” she announced, “that we shall be reinstating the Take Notice Board. Naturally, I’ll be in charge.”
A cheer went up, shrill and delighted. Sandwiches were hastily abandoned as the group surged toward the wooden board nailed to the schoolhouse wall, where Rachel took her place like a monarch addressing her court. With a piece of chalk pinched delicately between her fingers, she leaned forward and, in impeccable cursive, wrote the first scandal of the season:
Minnie May was seen giggling with Peter Clarke after Sunday service—what could it mean?
The reaction was immediate —a gasp, then a ripple of laughter and mock horror. Minnie May let out an indignant squeal, cheeks blazing, and lunged for the board. Beomgyu caught her around the waist with the ease of a boy who had wrangled cousins his whole life, laughing into her protests.
“Oh, don’t be such a goose,” he said, holding her fast. “It’s just a bit of fun.”
Minnie, breathless with outrage, wrestled the chalk from Rachel’s hand and scrawled her revenge in broad, triumphant strokes:
Rachel Clyde likes a boy in the schoolhouse whose name starts with a W and ends with an R.
The screeches of laughter that followed seemed to lift into the treetops, startling a cluster of crows into flight. Even Soobin, who prided himself on a certain unflappable composure, felt his lips tug helplessly upward. It was, after all, common knowledge in Evendale that Rachel’s tongue could run like the creek in spring, but when it came to Walter O’Hara, she could barely stammer out a “good morning.”
The laughter lingered as they made their way back inside, breathless and pink-cheeked. But for Soobin, the lightness faltered the moment he crossed the threshold.
Yeonjun was standing near the doorway, the easy confidence about him so infuriatingly natural it almost seemed unconscious. His shoulders were squared, his expression neutral but never unapproachable, the faintest curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth as he spoke with Taehyun and Kai.
Soobin felt his spine stiffen. He bunched his shoulders and raised his chin, adopting an aloof hauteur that he imagined would make him look untouchable. Without the smallest break in stride, he swept past the trio without so much as a breath in their direction.
Beomgyu, loitering a step behind, lingered long enough to murmur a few words to the alphas before darting after Soobin.
“Yeonjun looked right at you when you passed,” he whispered, voice threaded with curiosity.
“I don’t care,” Soobin said shortly, collapsing into his seat with a dramatic slump that suggested he did care, but would perish before admitting it aloud.
And yet, as the rustle of skirts and the scraping of benches settled into the hum of the classroom, there was something small and private curling in his chest — a selfish, secret satisfaction at the idea that Yeonjun might, perhaps, miss him after all.
The next morning dawned bright and silver-dewy, the kind of morning that seemed to ring with the quiet chime of some invisible bell, as though the world had been freshly made and set before them to admire. The road to the schoolhouse lay dappled with trembling green shadows from the overhanging maples, and the orchard at the edge of the lane was white with clover. Soobin and Beomgyu walked there in companionable stride, their shoes kicking up the sweet scent of crushed grass.
They were not far from the bend when the front door of Mrs. Samantha Maulkins’ neat, whitewashed house swung open and Kai stepped out to join them, his cap in his hand and a private little smile tugging at his mouth, as though he carried some delightful secret in his pocket.
“I think school is horrid,” Beomgyu announced suddenly and with tragic relish, his voice ringing through the quiet lane like the opening declaration of a drama. He gave a sigh worthy of the stage and slipped his arm through Soobin’s. “It’s true. School means no more afternoons sprawling in the orchard, watching clouds sail by like grand galleons, or those blissful late mornings. Only books, lectures, and arithmetic — three of the dullest things ever invented.”
Soobin and Kai exchanged a glance over Beomgyu’s head, a quick flash of shared amusement that did not need words.
“You’re the only one who gets late mornings, Beomgyu,” Kai observed, his tone edged with that easy dry humor that made his friends smile. “I’m up at dawn every day working the farm.”
“And my help is always required at the Inn before breakfast,” Soobin put in, tilting his head with mock gravity. “So you’re the sole sufferer here.”
As expected, Beomgyu gave them a dark, theatrical look. “You both are right bullies. Let me mourn my freedom in peace!”
Their laughter — Soobin’s light and Kai’s deeper — wound through the rustle of leaves until the schoolhouse came into view, its windows glinting in the morning sun. The air inside smelled of freshly sharpened pencils and the warm mustiness of stacked readers, the kind of smell that seemed to settle in one’s bones with September.
Beomgyu, by some unshakable law of his nature, could no more sit quietly through a morning of lessons than a bird could refuse to sing. Beneath his desk, he tap-danced elaborate rhythms with the heels of his boots, all while feeding the boy in front of him a wildly embroidered account of his weekend adventures. Soobin had given up trying to hush him; instead, he pressed his lips together to keep from laughing outright.
Mr. Woods, long practiced in the art of catching mischief mid-bloom, brought his palm down sharply on their desk. The sound cracked like a whip through the hum of recitation.
“If you’ve something to share, Mr. Choi,” he said, peering over his spectacles with a look that suggested he had seen a great many Beomgyus in his career, “you may as well say it aloud.”
Far from wilting under the reprimand, Beomgyu rose with a flourish, strolling to the front of the schoolhouse as though he were about to deliver a rousing speech in Parliament. His story — complete with grand hand gestures and exaggerated inflections — had the entire room laughing in short order, and even Mr. Woods’ mouth twitched in the corner before he shook his head in weary surrender.
But the morning’s order was not to last.
The students had barely returned from recess when the door banged open and a group of younger boys tumbled in, red-faced and breathless.
“Mrs. McCamby’s chickens!” they gasped.
The warning came too late. A flurry of white wings and outraged clucks surged in behind them — a whole flock, with a rooster at the helm who looked quite prepared to take on the British cavalry.
What followed was bedlam.
Beomgyu, skirts rolled to his knees, darted after two particularly stubborn hens, his face set in a look of noble purpose. Little Susy dissolved into a fit of terrified sobs, and Soobin scooped her up, murmuring comfort even as feathers swirled around them like the first snow of winter. Yeonjun and Taehyun immediately turned the business into a competition, vying to see who could capture the most birds.
Desks were knocked askew, inkwells overturned, and papers skittered across the floor like startled mice. By the time the last hen was secured, the schoolhouse resembled the aftermath of a country fair gone spectacularly wrong.
Beomgyu stood in the center, flushed and beaming, holding his lone chicken aloft as though it were a hard-won trophy. Yeonjun and Taehyun sat atop a crate containing the rest of the flock, their shirts blotched with ink and their hair bristling with feathers.
“Those are Mrs. McCamby’s prize chickens,” Beomgyu informed the room with pride. “Seven years running, state fair chicken pot pie champion. Won’t tell a soul what she feeds them.”
“Well,” Soobin murmured faintly, surveying the wreckage.
“Exactly,” Beomgyu agreed gravely.
Yeonjun grinned from across the room, his dark eyes bright under the fringe of feathers sticking to his ink-smeared shirt. “How’d you like our chicken-catching skills, Gyu?”
Kai, seated at a desk, had been furiously sketching the entire time, his cheeks pink with the effort.
“Quite good,” Beomgyu sniffed. “Only, I was far neater and more efficient.”
“You caught one chicken,” Taehyun reminded him.
“Plus the rooster,” Yeonjun added solemnly.
“And yet,” Beomgyu countered, “you both look as though you’ve been tarred and feathered for public entertainment in Rome.”
Soobin’s laugh escaped before he could stop it.
Kai let out a small whoop of triumph and spun his sketchbook around to reveal a surprisingly vivid scene: Yeonjun and Taehyun atop the crate, bedraggled but triumphant.
Yeonjun laughed first — a bright, unguarded laugh that spilled easily into the air. It was the kind of laugh that once would have made Soobin smile without thinking. But now, at the sound, he pressed his lips together and looked stubbornly away, as if Yeonjun Choi were no more remarkable than the dust motes dancing in the shaft of sunlight by the window.
If Yeonjun noticed, he said nothing. Yet when he glanced across the room, there was a flicker in his expression — quick and unreadable — before he bent his head back over the crate.
-
They were sent home early that day, owing to the absolute bedlam caused by the chickens, and the unfortunate boys responsible for the fiasco were made to stay behind and set the schoolhouse back in order. Soobin and Beomgyu, still breathless with laughter from the afternoon’s absurdities, set off towards town, their steps light with the unexpected reprieve from arithmetic and grammar drills. But instead of parting ways at the Inn, Beomgyu tugged Soobin down the lane that led to his family’s orchard, declaring that such a golden afternoon ought not to be wasted indoors.
The orchard was a world of dappled light and shifting shadows, the scent of ripe apples hanging thick in the warm air. They meandered through the rows of trees, picking fruit and dodging falling leaves, their laughter ringing out as they spun through the cool patches of shade. Beomgyu balanced on a low-hanging branch, delivering a dramatic recitation of the morning’s events, while Soobin, lying in the grass with his head pillowed on his hands, listened with a contented smile.
When Soobin at last came up the slope to the Inn, the late afternoon sun had painted his cheeks with a lingering flush, and the dust of the road clung to the hems of his trousers. He found Miriam already in possession of the day’s most savory morsel of news. Mrs. McCamby, so it appeared, had descended upon the town like an avenging angel from some fiery Old Testament vision, determined to make her wrongs known to all who had ears to hear — and even those who hadn’t.
“She was carrying on so loud that every last soul on Main Street could hear her without straining,” Miriam reported, her hands busy coaxing a stubborn wrinkle from the tablecloth with the brisk precision of a general folding battle plans. “Broad daylight, too, mind you. Badmouthing never looks well under the sun — though I suppose it wouldn’t be much improved by the moonlight, either. And it’s not as if her clan can boast saintliness themselves! Why, the McCambys don’t even darken the church doors come Sunday. Best to forgive and forget, if you ask me — though some folks would rather carry a grudge around like a favorite parasol.”
Later, while Soobin was supposed to be dusting the parlor furniture into submission, he found his attention straying to the front window. His timing was providential — just in time to spy Mrs. Samantha Maulkins making her way down from the crossroads with the unmistakable air of one bound on important business. Her bonnet bobbed with purpose; her skirts swished in a manner that brooked no nonsense. She was headed directly toward the modest Crosby dwelling — evidently intent upon quelling whatever tempest Mrs. McCamby had whipped up with poor Mr. Samuel Crosby, the mildest of omega fathers, whose single surviving son had the doubtful honor of being ringleader to the village’s most accomplished troop of young mischief-makers.
Soobin leaned perilously far out the window in his eagerness, when Miriam’s voice, sharp enough to slice clean through the quiet, startled him into retreat.
“Soobin, I trust the dusting is finished?”
He straightened guiltily. “Mrs. Maulkins is going to speak with the Crosbys right now, Miriam! I only wanted to see—,”
“Come away from there before you pitch yourself headlong to the sidewalk,” she scolded, marching over to haul him back by the sleeve. “If Samantha has anything worth knowing, I’ll invite her in for tea when she comes out, and you’ll hear every word without risking your neck. Now, mind that table before the dust settles thicker than my patience.”
From his post in the rocker, Henry exhaled a lazy ring of cigar smoke and chuckled. “You two do realize gossip is a vice?”
“The good Lord forgive us, then,” Miriam returned with pious serenity, smoothing her apron, “but we are not gossiping. We are merely observing the affairs of our fellow man with charitable concern. That woman was shrieking so loud, I couldn’t help but hear every syllable she poured over poor Samuel Crosby—the poor creature! He’s a delicate sort of omega, and that boy Matthew is the only babe he ever managed to keep. The lad’s spoiled as a harvest apple, mind you, but whose fault is that? Not the boy’s.”
Soobin hid a smile and dutifully swept the cloth over the tea table, though his thoughts wandered back down the street where the drama played on behind drawn curtains.
By the time the sun slid into the west, Main Street was steeped in golden shadows, and one by one the lamps bloomed with light. Soobin stepped onto the porch, kerosene lantern in hand, and spotted Mrs. Samantha Maulkins emerging from the Crosby doorway with the brisk, decisive air of one who had said her piece and meant it to stay said.
“Miriam!” he called, excitement sharpening his voice.
Miriam bustled out just in time to see him cup his hands and hail down the street, “Mrs. Samantha Maulkins! Won’t you come in for tea?”
Mrs. Maulkins did not require coaxing. With a satisfied nod, she turned up the walk, unpinning her shawl as she came.
“Well,” she announced, sweeping into the parlor with the confident rustle of skirts that always seemed to herald a tale worth hearing. “You will not believe the commotion that woman’s caused!”
The evening thus settled into that particular contentment which comes when small-town scandal is ladled out in generous spoonfuls over steaming cups, to be savored in the cozy glow of mutual understanding.
Mrs. Samantha Maulkins eased herself into the armchair by the fire with the air of one who had just witnessed a grand spectacle and was now prepared to share it with the unenlightened. She smoothed her skirts, accepted a cup of tea from Miriam with a gracious nod, and cleared her throat importantly. Soobin, perched on the edge of his seat, was practically vibrating with anticipation.
“Now, let me be plain with you,” Mrs. Maulkins began, giving the lace at her wrist a prim little tug, “I am not a gossiper — heaven preserve me from that title. But when there is unrest upon my street, I consider it my moral duty to step in and restore harmony where I may. It is only a pity that I could not reach the scene in time for the principal excitement; for, from what I have since heard, it must have been a sight to behold. What I tell you now is merely what poor Samuel Crosby confided when I stepped in later, out of neighborly concern.”
Miriam, settled in her armchair with the serenity of a woman who had seen many Evendale quarrels bloom and fade, poured herself another cup of tea. “Mrs. McCamby always did have a sharp tongue,” she remarked with knowing emphasis.
“Sharp tongue?” Mrs. Maulkins gave a short, incredulous laugh. “My dear Miriam, she could slice granite with it. Poor Samuel Crosby never stood a chance.”
Soobin leaned forward, his fingers tightening around his teacup. “What did she say?” he urged, boyishly eager.
Mrs. Maulkins drew in a fortifying sip before continuing. “Samuel told me — looking for all the world like a frightened dormouse — that he had been at the sink, wearing his apron and slippers, up to his elbows in suds, when the knocking came. Not a polite tapping, mind you, but a peremptory pounding, like a constable come to serve a warrant. He opened the door, and there stood Mrs. McCamby, looming in his threshold as though she had every right to the place.”
Here Mrs. Maulkins straightened, narrowing her eyes to a piercing squint, and when she spoke again her voice had taken on so uncanny a likeness to Mrs. McCamby’s that Soobin had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing aloud.
“‘Samuel Crosby!’ she screeched. ‘You ought to be ashamed! You and that good-for-nothing alpha of yours have raised a menace to society! Do you have any notion what your boy and his gang of ruffians have done to my prize chickens?’”
Mrs. Maulkins pressed on, absorbed in the relish of her recital.
“Samuel, naturally bewildered, said he wasn’t aware of any such incident — oh, and that was the match to the powder keg! ‘Not aware!’ she hollered. ‘Your hooligans broke into my coop — my coop, Samuel Crosby! Do you know how many seasons I have spent training those birds? The finest breeding in the whole valley! And what happens the instant your devils get their hands on them? They come careening into the schoolhouse, feathers flying like snow in a blizzard! My hens, my poor, gentle hens, are shaken beyond recovery! And my rooster — my prize-winning rooster — humiliated beyond telling! It will be a marvel if he ever crows again!’”
Miriam hid a smile behind her teacup.
Mrs. Maulkins lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Samuel said he tried to speak — to defend his boy, or at least plead ignorance — but Mrs. McCamby’s tongue was as unstoppable as the tide. She shook her finger so furiously he feared it might snap clean off. And then Eugene came to the door.”
“Eugene is a sensible man,” Miriam observed.
“He tried to be,” Mrs. Maulkins allowed. “But Mrs. McCamby turned the full force of her guns on him. ‘You should be ashamed as well!’ she declared. ‘Letting your son run about like a wild animal! A menace to the decent order of the township!’ Well, she stormed away not long after, and there stood Samuel, clutching his dish towel like a drowning man to a plank. Eugene, for his part, said something I cannot in conscience repeat, but I gathered he was not inclined to extend the olive branch.”
“And what did you tell them?” Miriam asked, though she had long since decided it was folly to scold a man like Samuel Crosby for anything at all.
“I calmed them as best I could,” Mrs. Maulkins replied, with the air of one who has settled more than one neighborhood tempest. “Told them the boys had been kept after school to tidy up their disaster, and that Mrs. McCamby would likely cool down within the week. Samuel looked relieved; Eugene muttered that if he so much as heard the phrase ‘prize-winning rooster’ again, he might be tempted to solve the matter with buckshot.”
Soobin, idly scuffing his heel on the wooden floor, asked, “And what will you do now?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Mrs. Maulkins said decisively, “I shall go to the McCamby farm myself and see if I can bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind before she takes it into her head to demand compensation. And if she does, well — she has won the state fair for seven years running, and if those birds are truly as fine as she boasts, I daresay they will recover from their ‘trauma.’”
Miriam shook her head, smiling faintly. “I doubt Samuel Crosby’s boy will be squeezing under any more fences in the near future.”
“I should hope not,” Mrs. Maulkins agreed. “Though if I were Mrs. McCamby, I might consider fastening that coop a trifle tighter; lest her chickens take it into their heads to flee her tirades altogether.”
With that last pronouncement, the three dissolved into laughter, the lamplight dancing merrily over their faces. Outside, night pressed softly against the Inn windows, and the great scandal of the day settled itself, already beginning to take its place among Evendale’s cherished collection of tales — half truth, half embroidery, and wholly human.
—
“Soobin! I thought I told you to mop these floors; there’s still mud all over them from last night’s rain, tracked in by every boot in Evendale, by the looks of it!” Miriam called as she pushed open the back door, her sharp gaze landing on Soobin, who was seated cross-legged on the veranda, his skirts bunched up around him. He was utterly absorbed in the spectacle of the sky, where the last, lingering light of day was melting into a symphony of blues and purples and pinks. The vast expanse above stretched endlessly, brushed with the softest pastels at first — pale rose bleeding into lavender, then deepening into richer, more somber hues as the sun sank lower. Wisps of cloud, tinged with coral and amber, drifted lazily across the horizon, their reflections rippling in the winding creeks below.
Soobin blinked up at Miriam, his dark eyes dreamy and distant. “I was going to, Miriam, truly. I even fetched the water — see, the bucket’s right here — but then I turned and saw the most glorious sunset God has ever painted, and I simply had to stop and admire it.”
Miriam huffed, arms crossed, though there was a twitch at the corner of her lips that betrayed her amusement. “You say that about every sunset you see, Soobin Choi. Now, up with you! That mud isn’t going to mop itself.”
With a languid sigh, Soobin stretched, his pale arms arching over his head, fingertips grazing the beams of the veranda covering. From where the inn sat, perched on its gentle rise, he could see the vast sweep of Birch Meadow unfurling behind Main Street. The winding ribbon of the White Road traced the meadow’s grassy edge, the very road he had walked so many times with Yeonjun on choir nights, before their rivalry had resumed its full, fiery force. The air was alive with the hum and song of crickets, thick with the mingled scents of ripened apples and drying hay, and touched by the faint, briny whisper of the sea drifting in from the bay beyond the hills.
Just past the creek at the meadow’s edge, where the birches clustered in a golden tangle of leaves, Soobin knew Beomgyu’s family orchard lay hidden from sight; he couldn’t quite glimpse it from here. At that moment, a flock of sparrows rose in a sudden, frantic flurry, startled by some unseen movement. Their dark silhouettes cut sharply against the molten-gold sky, wheeling and dipping before vanishing into the coming twilight. Soobin watched them go with a wistful sigh, but at Miriam’s pointed clearing of the throat, he reluctantly tore his gaze away, resigning himself to his fate.
A poet’s heart might soar with the setting sun, but a boy who lived under Miriam Choi’s roof still had floors to mop.
When the rich wooden floors of the hall had been coaxed into a warm, honeyed gleam, Soobin found his steps meandering toward the parlor. There was a pleasant confusion of voices there, all mellow with the kind of contentment that settles over a room when the lamps have been lit and the evening has begun to drowse.
Mr. Jones sat planted in the middle of the old couch, his broad shoulders hunched earnestly over a guitar, coaxing a tune from its strings with the slow gravity of a man shelling peas. Beside him, Ms. Evangeline sang—her voice sweet and soft, though with a ripple of daring in it, like a girl dipping her toes into a brook in April.
Soobin paused at the turn of the staircase, resting his chin on the smooth, round end of the banister as if it were the most natural pillow in the world.
“One morning, one morning, one morning in May,
I spied a fair couple, inquirin’ their way—”
The words floated up to him like thistledown, and in their wake came a picture his mind was only too glad to paint: a soldier, boots dewy from the meadow, pausing by a spring where nightingales spilled their music, and a lady leaning toward him with something dangerously like hope in her eyes.
When the last note of the ballad thinned away into the lamp-lit air, Soobin leaned farther over the stairs.
“Ms. Evangeline, what is that song about?”
She looked up, her cheeks the very shade of apple blossoms in the sun, and smiled as though she had caught him peeping through a keyhole at some private secret.
“It’s an old song from the Old World, Soobin. I couldn’t rightly tell you what it’s all about—only that it’s sad enough to wear the name of a ballad.”
“Well — let me think,” Mr. Jones put in, in his dry, deliberate fashion, resting a broad hand on his knee. “It’s about a soldier and a fine-looking lady he met on the road. Only, the fellow had a wife waiting for him back in London, so he had to leave the lady in the end. The version we’ve sung tonight — me and this pretty lady here — has been trimmed down over the years. No knight in it, and half the verses gone. That’s what happens when a story’s been traveling too long; it loses some of its baggage along the way.”
“That’s awfully sad,” Soobin mused, as if rolling the taste of the words on his tongue. “And the lady wanted to marry him, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Ms. Evangeline agreed softly, with a glance toward the fire. “I suppose it’s meant to show how deceiving love can be, no?”
“And,” Mr. Jones added, reaching for his glass of whiskey with a twinkle in his eye, “that it’s best to lay all your cards on the table before you begin the game.”
They struck up another tune, brisk and rollicking, and Soobin slipped quietly away up the stairs to his little room beneath the eaves. He sank onto the thin mattress with a sigh, unbuttoning his shoes and setting them neatly by the bed, his feet still snug in their stockings. Drawing his knees up, he sat curled like a cat against the quiet.
The window stood open, and a cool September breeze wandered in as if it owned the place, carrying with it the salt breath of the sea and the far-off sighing of trees. It played across Soobin’s cheeks, teasing a strand of hair into his eyes.
Love, he told himself very firmly, was not what he and Yeonjun had shared. No indeed. But there had been something warm — an undeniable glow — between them on those slow walks home along the White Road, when the dust turned gold under the setting sun.
It is well, Soobin assured himself with the air of a judge pronouncing sentence, that I no longer speak with Yeonjun. He was clearly a creature who enjoyed the sport of mockery, and doubtless only listened to me so that he might later twist my words into some pointed jest — as he had done so cruelly before the choir performance. No, I will not think of the way he looked at me as though he could read my very soul in a glance, nor of the curious quirk of his mouth when I spoke of the fanciful. I will, instead, think of his white canines when his temper flared — yes, that is the truer picture.
“You look pensive, dear.”
Miriam’s voice broke the thread of his musings. He turned to see her leaning against the doorway, hands folded in her apron, eyes alight with quiet amusement.
“A penny for your thoughts?”
“Oh, I’m only thinking about how deceiving people can be,” Soobin replied, unfolding himself from his huddle and moving to shut the window against the creeping chill.
Miriam crossed the room and perched upon the edge of his bed, her eyes warm and searching. “Are you and Yeonjun not speaking again?”
“He’s a knothead,” Soobin said, and the words leapt from his lips sharp and hot, like chestnuts bursting in the fire.
“Ah.” Miriam let the sound rest a moment in the air between them, while Soobin stared fixedly at the floorboards as if he could read some secret truth in their grain.
“Then,” she said at length, “shall I tell him to go away?”
Soobin’s head jerked up. “Is he here?”
“Yes. Came round asking for you. Says he’s brought you something.”
“I don’t want to see him.” The words scorched his tongue, but he could not call them back. And when Miriam’s face softened with pity, he felt the sting of tears gathering despite himself. Well— he did not want to see Yeonjun. He had been unkind, and Soobin had already spent too much forgiveness on him.
Miriam smoothed her apron as she rose. “I won’t pretend to know what passed between you, but you must see, Soobin, that the boy cares for you—or he would not come like this. Even you must know what he is implying.”
Yes, Soobin thought as she left the room. He knew very well. An alpha only brought an omega a gift if he meant to begin courting; there was no other reason in the world.
He pressed his cheek to the cool pane of glass and looked out upon the dusky road. There — Yeonjun’s tall figure moving steadily away into the deepening twilight. Something gave a sharp, almost painful twist inside Soobin’s chest, and he stepped back quickly.
“Good. Let him go,” he murmured to the stillness. “Did he mean to court me? Surely not. He likes to go about with half the omegas in town. I’ve likely just been spared from becoming another handkerchief in his pocket.”
With that he swept the curtain across the window, shutting out the night—and missing entirely the fact that, down in the lamp-lit street, Yeonjun had paused in his going, turned, and looked up just in time to catch the flutter of the curtain as it fell.